Archives for December 2014

LSU football could return to national prominence in 2015. As Coach Les Miles pointed out in the postgame presser yesterday, the team is very freshmen and sophomore heavy. So they’ll be sophomore and junior heavy next year and figure to be a major power in the always loaded SEC West.

In 2014 Monica Lewinsky returned from obscurity back to the home pages. Lewinsky ended her almost 20 years of silence by telling her story of that saga which dominated news cycles back in 1998. In what was an even crazier coincidence, totally unrelated, Monica Lewinsky returned to relevance just two days before a guy named Ha Ha Clinton-Dix was drafted by the Green Bay Packers out of the University of Alabama.

The Arturo Vidal to Manchester United rumors were by far the biggest hit-makers for The Sports Bank. This transfer obviously never materialized, but it took home the #1, #3, #7 and #9 spots on our list of the year’s ten most popular stories.

The Arturo Vidal narrative even brought us the first 100,000 visits single day in the six year history of the site. That occurred back in August.

Something seemed off about the LSU defense today. Not to take anything away from Malik Zaire, Everett Golson and the Notre Dame offense, but the Bayou Bengals D just weren’t themselves. LSU came in as 7.5 point favorites, but they couldn’t seem to stop the Irish at all in the first half.

The rumors surrounding LSU Defensive Coordinator John Chavis could be the reason why.

The blue print to stop Johnny Manziel is right there, hiding in plain sight. Les Miles and LSU figured it out in college, and the Cincinnati Bengals copied it. In his only NFL start, Manziel was atrocious, and it’s because the Bengals did their best impression of the Bayou Bengals, and it worked to a tee!

Les Miles is known for doing some crazy things on the football field every now and then. “The Mad Hatter” has also a reputation for making post game press conferences interesting for a change. He often deviates from the boring “coachspeak” script and likes to be funny and compelling during his media availabilities. Those media sessions will remain in Baton Rouge.

There are plenty of Big 10 basketball teams that owe us an apology right now. We tracked all of the losses that the league suffered to low-majors and mid-majors up until a couple weeks ago (results here). Then the number hit the high teens, and we just gave up.

Getting people to care about college hoops during the holidays is always difficult. When Big 10 basketball is having a really down year like this, it’s even harder.

From a branding and/or marketing perspective, Notre Dame versus LSU is as good a bowl match-up as it gets. Forbes recently rated Notre Dame’s football program the second most valuable in the country at $122 million, behind only Texas ($131 million value), with the notation:

“A single home game attracts almost 62,000 visitors from outside the South Bend area; on average, each of those fans injects close to $200 into the local economy.”

Last week Radamel Falcao proved his match fitness and finally worked his way towards earning a permanent place at Manchester United today with that beautiful header versus Aston Villa. It provided the only scoring for the Red Devils as they ended up with a 1-1 draw at AVFC.

The back-story of how Falcao got here is quite interesting though. He opened up about how he knew his departure from Atletico Madrid would be swift and inevitable.